You talk too much, for real!

So thanks to swelling on my vocal chords due to a respiratory infection, I've been ordered to cease ALL unnecessary verbal communication! D@mn! This is going to be a rough next few days for me especially since I TALK for a living! Double URGH!!!!!

I still haven't heard back from "the gig" but I hope that's only because one of my references is out of town. Or that God has something else in mind for me. And given that I've got quite a few clients for my tutoring gig, it's not like I'm not staying busy.

What I have NOT been doing is ANY programming thanks to my laptop becoming infected with a virus (and yes I have anti-viral software that ain't worth squat!). So after trying to get that working correctly for 5 days, I finally got most of it together and have given up on the rest. And given that I can work on 3 operating systems, I'm now doing ALL Of my work in Ubuntu, which I blogged about previously. Honestly, this is the BEST OS ever and I should have converted everything over to it a LONG time ago. Unfortunately, while I can convert any of my Mac/iWorks and Windows/Microsoft Office data/information to the LibreOffice the Ubuntu equivalent of those software programs, neither of those "reads" Ubuntu data. But that's cool because I figured out a way around that too, so it's all good!

Other news is that I have a Komen Breast cancer event coming up soon, so I'm excited about that. My Health Informatics class has also been halted indefinitely because THEIR software got infected too (I think that's how my computer became infected!). So I haven't done much "academically" lately but apparently I need to chill out for a minute anyway!

You talk too much!!!

*Image from google images

This is a phrase I've heard pretty much ALL My life, LOL!!! Sometimes it's a good thing and other times......other times it results in me being banned from a certain VERY popular premed website, LOL!!

I thought about this recently after I made a comment on oldpremeds about that certain premed website. Then I remembered that the reason I got banned in the first place was not so much due to my VERY vocal opinions on what I thought was a racist post in the pre-Allopathic section. But was due to long standing "run-ins" with a certain Sam Jackson character from the movie Djanjo acting, former oldpremed member who had moderator powers on that popular premed site. Yeah. And as Janet Hubert said when asked about her fued with Will Smith, "if you want me to blow smoke up your a$$, you need to pay me for it". Now, I'm thinking there must be a way to disagree and have an intelligent debate without folks needing to feel like they should have their a$$e$ kissed in the process because as anyone reading my blog knows by now, I ain't really into that. Otherwise, I'd still gainfully employed in Big Pharma. And YES, I'm CLEAR I'll have to learn to bite my tongue in med school and beyond!

And speaking of jobs, I was VERY pleasantly suprised to see a VERY familiar face at the interview, a woman who had been a PhD student in a lab I did a rotation in for my Pharm degree. And it was the BEST interview I'd had in a LONG time even though we talked a LOT about things that had nothing to do with the job itself, LOL!!! Yeah, I'm thinking that God HAS to has his hands ALL OVER THIS GIG! :)

Now I'll end with a shout out to RUN-DMC and hope to post soon about my start date on my new gig!

Mother-Daughter tag team!

So it turns out that the school I want DD to attend for college just happens to also be the school where I'm applying to the PhD program in Informatics/Epidemiology. And why this just now occurred to me I don't know, but I'm sure DD is on some level, freaked out by the prospect of us being at the same school, LOL!! Oh well! :)

Other news is that the Informatics position I blogged about last week is pretty much a done deal. Okay, I don't know that for sure, but I'm pretty optimistic that that's the case! In the meantime, I've got a TON of papers and courses to review in preparation because I intend to hit a "home run" in this interview for a job which will be a financial high point in my career. And given how bad the economy is for many people, I'm so thoroughly blessed to be in this position!

Speaking of Informatics, I attended a course in GIS at my future PhD school yesterday and like all the other things I'm learning in and around Informatics, it was a LOT of fun! And in an even bigger irony is the fact that a spot opened up for the course 2 hours before it started at a point where I was preparing a resume for gigs in Histology/Pathology, the job area I do NOT want. But when I got that email, I took that as a sign from God that I needed to stay the Informatics/Epidemiology/Data Analysis course (and GIS in the context of disease surveillance is VERY applicable to it) and have faith that God was going to see things through for me. The confirmation came while I was at the GIS training and I was contacted about the Informatics gig for the final in-person interview. And the fact that the new gig is a short 40 minute commute away on the metro (which is 2 minutes from our house) and 1 min to the job on the other end, was simply the icing on the cake! I was DREADING the prospects of commuting every day back and forth for at least 1.5 hours one way, so this revelation was just what I needed to hear!

Now I'm trying to figure how da' heck I'm going to do all the things on my plate now, working full-time, tutoring on the side, AND taking 2 PhD courses!! Oh yeah, and squeezing in some MCAT prep time too! URGH!!! But getting used to juggling is something I'm okay with since I'll have to do this as an MD/PhD student in the future!!!

Cha-Ching!

No, I haven't secured a full-time gig just yet, but I did get a call this morning about a 6 figure gig, contracting with a federal agency (And people WRONGLY think you can't get paid working with the Gov't, LOL!!). Now this gig will literally mean that my professional life has come full circle since I'll be indirectly working with data from the Pharmaceutical industry. And it's full circle because I originally moved to DC to accept a position with an agency directly involved with the FDA and Big Pharma!

So what's this gig that's pays so well and looks absolutely fabulous from the "outside"? The formal title is Research Informatics Specialist which means that EVERYTHING I'm learning now in Informatics and 90% of my formal education is directly applicable to this job, assuming the job description is correct! And they'll pay for me to take PhD courses in Informatics too! But what I'm most excited about is the prospect of playing dress up for work.

Now I'm trying not to get all geeked up about this gig because that hasn't gotten me ANYWHERE lately, LOL!!! But like I've mentioned before and never really practiced, I'm going to go with the flow so to speak, while staying "prayed up" so that when the time comes, I'll make a good job decision!!!

Speaking of money, here's one of my all time favorite money songs sang by the Ojay's from the 1970's on Soooooooooooooooooooooooooullllll Traaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain: